"UBS has agreed to buy Credit Suisse after increasing its offer to more than $2bn, with Swiss authorities poised to change the country’s laws to bypass a shareholder vote on the transaction as they rush to finalise a deal before Monday."
Best part is: "change the country's laws"
You are living through the worst economy of the past 150 years.
Of 29 countries with real GDP/capita data covering the Long Depression (1873-96), Great Depression (1929-47) and today's Silent Depression (2007-2?) only 5 are unambiguously better off.
South Korea, incredibly, has triggered each of the Bank for International Settlements' early warning indicators of systemic banking crisis.
• Residential Property Prices
• Foreign-Money Inflows
• Domestic Lending
• Total Private-Sector Debt Service
• Household Debt Service
Some personal news, I tried to off myself this morning… by running a half-marathon (1:57:22) followed by a 3km ocean race (47:18).
Instead of having me committed they gave me a plaque!
Lastly, I ran into
@RaoulGMI
along the beach (no speedo).
#TheCaymanExperience
#PiratesWeek
Canada has tripped 4 BIS EWIs, including Residential Property. Three times before Canada crossed the RP threshold: crisis, recession, but the third time was overwhelmed by the pandemic. Also:
• Foreign-Money Inflows
• Total Private-Sector Debt Service
• Household Debt Service
The
#FederalReserve
's Reverse Repo Program has exploded to $0.5 trillion. Why?
The mainstream, orthodox narrative is that 'this is fine'; a response to 'too many bank reserves'.
What does it really mean? Collateral scarcity. Systemic fragility. A warning.
#RRP
“Podcasts are becoming influential sources of misinformation.”
Agreed! What’s needed is a government funded, apolitical organization of technocrats that’ll evaluate news and determine what’s safe for the public to learn. We’ll call it the National Ministry of Public Truth.
More than 1,000 scientists and health professionals are calling on Spotify to crack down on COVID falsehoods being spread on Joe Rogan's podcast.
The pressure highlights a trend: Podcasts are becoming influential sources of misinformation.
Russia exported 819K barrels/day to India in May, up from 277,000 in April, making 🇷🇺 the second-largest energy supplier for 🇮🇳. The increase is associated with record discounts on 🇷🇺 energy to increase demand and help offset the losses from Western markets.
—
@GPFutures
Japanese machine tool orders, a leading indicator for the world economy, contracted in February (4th of 5 and 11th of last 16 months).
Graph 1: the pandemic/lockdown recovery was not impressive compared to previous crisis rebounds.
Graph 2: JPN's MTO have not grown since 1990.
I guess instead of writing about it and talking about it on YouTube I should have gone on TikTok—
That’s ok, I’m just pleased to know this depression will be remembered as I named it (maybe I can get a coupon for a free cup at the soup kitchen).
I wonder if I should clear my 2024 calendar to be available for interviews?
Very happy this is getting publicity finally because identifying the true depth of our, at one-time economic, but now metastasized social and geopolitical problem improves our chances of solving it.
South Korean exports (first 20 days) are a wonderful global indicator of economic conditions. Like many of the most recent readings across various economic accounts, the message is mixed.
Definitely a downturn. Definitely getting better.
So...?
Please help push my interview (12.2k views) with
@JackFarley96
on
@Blockworks_
past
@biancoresearch
's day-earlier appearance (21.7k) as I'll be talking to Mother soon and she'll ask, 'Done anything meaningful with your life yet?'
📺
“I am reputedly a comedian, but after seeing the financial conditions of the world I have decided I am as much an economist as financiers are comedians.”
— Charlie Chaplin, June 1932
How do you solve Triffin's Paradox? You don't, at least not within the Bretton Woods paradigm. You solve it by creating a bank-based IOU accounting ledger whose promises ('money') are 'denominated' in USD, JPY, GBP etc... backed neither by gold nor currency but by "trust me".
“We are no longer the victims of the vagaries of the business cycles. The Federal Reserve System is the antidote for money contraction and credit shortage.” 👀
—Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury, 1928
Thank you Mr.
@JamesGRickards
for including me alongside Jeff in your latest bestseller. Amazing!
(For all those interested, I will be autographing page 188 all this week down at the beach by the second red buoy.)
Sweden bears a couple scarlet letters of credit-burden shame:
• Total Private Sector Debt Service
• Household Debt Service
Can the private sector afford simultaneously rising debt service and energy costs this winter? Government has stepped in on energy already.
The BIS estimates that when thresholds are crossed they elevate the probability of a systemic banking crisis to 50 percent in the next 12 quarters.
The average, post-WW2 chance a country experiences a financial crisis in any year runs at 7 percent.
Japan's public debt problems are not news but recently its private sector has crossed the BIS' EWI credit thresholds.
In fact its private credit expansion has crossed a line not seen since the infamous 1980s bubble!
Two BIS EWIs:
• Foreign-Money Inflows
• Domestic Lending
The reason it is the "Silent" Depression is because the establishment (media, parties, technocrats) say nothing.
If an economy falls in the woods and the financial press does not report it is it in depression?
Yes! But they don't raise the subject lest those in charge look bad.
@leadlagreport
@SantiagoAuFund
@YouTube
My tier ranking of sovereigns most likely to suffer a debt/financial/currency/economic crisis in next three years:
Tier 1
🇰🇷
Tier 2
🇨🇦
Tier 3
🇸🇪🇨🇿🇳🇴
Tier 4
🇭🇰🇫🇷🇨🇭🇨🇳🇨🇱🇱🇺🇦🇷🇸🇰🇩🇪🇳🇿🇧🇷
Announced corporate layoffs in the US, as tracked by Challenger, Gray and Christmas, for January 2023 are at levels typically observed in US recession or international monetary malfunction.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Russia reaps reward of domestic payment system after Visa and Mastercard withdraw
Planning highlights risk for western powers that sanctions reorder the international payments landscape
Dollars were money in the 1950s.
Euro-dollars become ‘m o n € y’ in the 1960s.
Repurchase agreements become ‘m o n € ¥’ in the 1970s.
Collateral becomes ‘m 0 n € ¥’ in the 1980s.
Math becomes ‘Σ 0 n € ¥’ in the 1990s.
Perception becomes ‘Σ 0 ∞ € ¥’ in the 2000s.
"The first casualty of war is said to be the truth, and it probably perishes even before the first shot is fired. The second casualty of war is sound money."
—
#RussellNapier
(Feb, 2022)
France is experiencing accelerating total private-sector debt service costs like few other countries. It saw its debt service ratio surge during the pandemic as income fell away. But unlike other nations its post-bug experience got worse. Also too much:
• Domestic Lending
#SouthKorean
exports (prelim., 20 days) were negative for the 9th consecutive month in May. This happened in 2015-16, 2019-20 and almost 2008-09.
Korea's
#1
export destination is China.
Base metal prices have had a 70% correlation to this economic account since Aug. '07.
Most financial crises of the past 200 years were a consequence of private - not public - debt bubbles popping.
Below are our world leaders in total private, non-financial corporation debt leaders.
Today's anniversary show of Making Sense, a podcast with
@JeffSnider_AIP
, is a special countdown of the Top 10 Show Intros of Season One. The critics agree:
Havenstein: "I wouldn't have done this"
Van Metre: "I am speechless"
Pal: "Haunting"
GooglePod:
This is why I call it the Silent Depression. Policymakers / economists / technocrats / central bankers took steps to ensure it would never happen again (are they gods?). Therefore, it cannot (be said to) happen again lest they look bad; and we cannot have that!
@TonyNashNerd
"Depression" was way overused in 2008/2009 too. In the 1930s, policymakers took steps to ensure we could not have another depression. Included in these steps was adoption of automatic stabilizer programs (subsequently expanded in 1960s).
The US Treasury curve is inverted, warning of economic disorder ahead. What about other sovereign bonds?
Gathering up 21 national 2- vs. 10-year spreads I count seven inversions.
Also, a 'global' sovereign bond 2s10s spread; contrasting central banker and market consensuses.
Everyone's talking about 2008, but I'm starting to get eery 1998 vibes, i.e., Long Term Capital Management. Like all these stresses are going to blow up someone big. Really big. And threaten to take the whole house of leveraged debt cards down. UK pensions just a warning bell.
Some countries are in worse debt position now than during Global Financial Crisis.
Total private (excluding financial institutions) debt burdens relative to GDP, by country, across time (1995-2021). Heat map is relative to that country's history (some data goes back to 1940s).
Both Switzerland and Hong Kong have violated the same two credit measures:
• Domestic Lending
• Total Private Sector Debt Service
Both are advanced economy money centers. Both have been well over the line for years! Maybe it is global and Chinese capital flight to safe havens?
“Today work rates for prime-age American men are actually lower than in 1940, when America’s unemployment rate stood at almost 15 percent. Yes: prime-age American men have a Depression-scale work problem today.”
—Nicholas Eberstadt, ‘Not Doing the Work’, Nov-2022.
“Today... the government expenditure multiplier after three years is negative 0.2. ...[I]f you engage in a dollar of debt financed fiscal activity, that will boost the GDP by dollar but at the end of three years you will reduce private GDP by about $1.20.”
— Dr. Lacy Hunt, 2021
“Ask yourself sometime who benefits from inflation. The people in debt benefit, society’s losers. The government benefits because it collects more in taxes without raising rates. Who doesn’t benefit? The man with money in his pocket, the man who paid his bills.”
—John Updike
@MacroAlf
I'd add that central banks can print a kind of money (bank reserves), but it's rather narrow in terms of who can use it and where (e.g. laundromat tokens).
So, QE creates trillions of laundromat tokens. And that's not very useful to the real economy...
The BIS reported today that international loans remained unchanged quarter-over-quarter as of Sep. '22.
They are effectively unchanged since Mar. '08 too.
From Jan. '77 to Jun. '07 cross-border claims compounded at 13.6% a year. Since then? Just 1.4%.
Israel has violated two of the BIS EWI of credit risk:
• Residential Property Prices
• Foreign-Money Inflows
It makes sense that Israel serves as a regional safe haven for capital during stress (2011-12, 2020-21). So perhaps foreign money inflow is fine? But that property...
"Now of course, the Fed doesn't print money. The Fed's liabilities are not medium of exchange, they're not a store of value, they're not money. They do not circulate."
-
#LacyHunt
(interviewed by
@DiMartinoBooth
on 29-Mar-2021 at
@RealVision
)
Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, explaining why the US government will never go bankrupt in a 60 minutes Interview on Sunday. "As the central bank, we have the ability to create money". This completely destroy the arguments for "austerity" and"fiscal responsibility".
Time to buy bonds? Also, did the ECB warn of a 2011-12 Euro Crisis re-run?
Eurodollar University, Ep. 253 with
@MacroAlf
&
@JeffSnider_AIP
:
📖
📺
🔊
🥜
☁️
I highly recommend listening to this podcast to hear Mr. Achuthan explain why the outlook remains recessionary, has been recessionary and there's not much out there suggesting otherwise.
Prescient, accurate inflection identification for many years now.
.
@ErikSTownsend
welcomes Lakshman Achuthan
@businesscycle
to the show. They examine the growth, business and inflation cycles along with ECRI’s leading indicators which are plumbing lows never seen before except during the depths of the 2008 crash.
BREAK: Prince of Wales will not accept suitcases of cash in future, royal source says
Palace briefing comes days after the Sunday Times revealed the heir to the throne accepted millions in cash from former Qatari prime minister HBJ
@AnnPettifor
@DanielaGabor
Britain's GDP/capita expansion since 2006 is on par with the Long and Great Depressions. Why? Because we are in another, global depression. This one is silent because the economists cannot admit that they let it happen again. They do use euphemisms though.
"To avoid inflation in the long run and to allow short-term interest rates ultimately to return to normal levels, the Fed's balance sheet will eventually have to be brought back to a more sustainable level. The FOMC will ensure that that is done in a timely way."
- Bernanke, 2008
Of the 29 countries, there are four nations that have grown real GDP/capita more slowly today (2007-22) than they did during the two worst economic periods of the last century-and-a-half:
Canada, Finland, Japan and the USA.
SLOWER than during the Great Depression!
The
#PetroYuan
is helping China relieve its
#dollar
sourcing difficulties. Interestingly, those difficulties ARE NOT registering on the PBOC's balance sheet. Indeed, foreign exchange reserves are 'unchanged'. For months! In the middle of a monetary maelstrom?! That's no accident.
“There isn’t a magic money tree that we can shake that suddenly provides for everything that people want.”
— Theresa May, UK Prime Minister (Jun. '17)
Well, there were forests of them before 2008.
Small Businesses = over 99% of total U.S. Employer firms and >60% of net private sector hiring on a monthly basis
This is way worse than 2001 or 2008
#Quad4
Recession
RICHARD FISHER: QE is easy money that powered the stock market.
@JeffSnider_AIP
:
#QuantitativeEasing
is NOT cheap money, it is
#BankReserves
that DO NOT flow into stocks, BUT BUT BUT... the Fed's easy-money-narrative DOES flow into equities! Psy-op and sloganeering, not money.
3.1%—post-WW2 real growth 🇺🇸
1.6%—post-GFC real growth 🇺🇸
The “most significant economic story of our lifetimes…”
As per
@DavidBahnsen
in “Our Japanese Economy” (National Review, 11-Sep-2023)
#TheSilentDepression
@Jen66718580
@PeterMcCormack
To his credit,
@EmilKalinowski
has been one of the leading voices in the idea that the 2010s were a silent depression.
I agree with that analysis, coming from a Dalio-esque long term debt cycle angle.
Was on the local radio show talking about the Scramble for Africa 2 that ‘Team West’ is only now waking up to.
Russia has made great gains in last three years. China has been at it for decades.
What for? I argue it’s the metals—mining and processing.
Mr. Russell Napier’s roadmap for this, if I may be so bold, is that Tokyo will inform its corporations, pension funds, insurance companies and such to repatriate money. That begets selling foreign holdings, which ‘forces’ the West’s financial repression, controls, etc.
IF banks produce the overwhelming proportion of money for the economy; and
IF banks continue to increase their lending to only the most-creditworthy customer(s);
THEN it’s no surprise to me the economy stinks, has stunk and will stink.
The percentage of banks' assets held in cash and Treasuries is down from 38% at its peak to 33% recently, which is still historically high.
Basically the opposite scenario of 2007/2008/2009.
…contrary to my age and involving great responsibilities and perils, I accepted with reluctance and only to preserve our friends and possession, for in Florence things can go badly for the rich if they don’t run the state.
—Lorenzo de’ Medici, 1469
A Catch-22, then and now.
“A resumption of normal purchasing by the public will be quickly followed by an expansion of bank loans. The latter must follow, but cannot proceed, such action.”
—Guaranty Trust Co., June 1932
Neat. I believed when I first coined the name that historians will label 2007-2x as a ‘silent’ depression to vilify establishment economists for prioritizing the profession’s reputation over ‘obvious’ realities.
I’m secretly rather proud of myself.
The term
#SilentDepression
is gaining traction for good reason.
The official response, such as it is, by
@federalreserve
has been to bail out the big banks, preserve private equity profits, and assure the financial sector has everything it needs at all times.
Have you seen a chart of M2 lately? Money supply has achieved escape velocity into the inflation-osphere! 🤯
And yet the nominal economy stinks. 😔
@JeffSnider_AIP
says something is missing. (Spoiler Alert: what's missing is 'money', like M3 or M5 and especially M∞). 🤔
Major curve reshaping today - 6m bill yield now well below 3m flipping the rate cut schedule forward by a lot. Euro$ futures bid many contracts by 20 bps for same reasons, fast and furious rate cuts on the way.
It's not what the Fed wants to do, but what it will be forced to do.
🧨 July 2008 ECB rate hike; Global Financial Crisis.
🧨 July 2011 ECB rate hike; European Sovereign Debt Crisis.
🧨 July 2022 ECB rate hike; probably nothing...
POWELL: MEASURES OF MONEY SIGNALING A SYSTEMIC CRISIS IN PROGRESS SINCE MAY ‘22 IS FAKE NEWS.
POWELL: DON’T LISTEN TO EURODOLLAR UNIVERSITY WITH
@JeffSnider_AIP
.
Merry Christmas to shifu
@JeffSnider_EDU
—monetary sensei, economics yogi, macro Santa who comes with the gifts that keeps on giving: insight and education.
The difference between GDP and GDI is gotten huge. If you're the Fed and you know GDI is more accurate at at times like these, you're getting a little nervous just on account of economic risks.
Then look at the BTFP, no wonder Powell pivoted.
@JackFarley96
That's me.
Intelligent, supportive, funny... me, me, me...
Me also...
I have a great body, and sometimes I go months without looking.
This is a man we're talking about, right?
Does he have to use the word poopy?
I am really close on this one... really, really close.
But the unemployment rate is so low! But the job openings are so high! This might be the best jobs market in decades! *sarcasm*
It seems that markets believe the Fed will use the 'strong' labor market and high CPI readings excuse to keep hiking right into the teeth of recession.
Interesting graphic that debunks the
#employment
is strong story.
1) We are not creating NEW jobs, just replacing jobs lost during the pandemic.
2) Millions remain missing from the labor force which makes the
#employment
rate appear stronger than it is.
How's the real economy? The first 20 days of exports out of S. Korea are our first monthly clue. 🧐
We see three consecutive months of acceleration. 🥳
But, the data is unadjusted. On a daily average basis we observe a three-month deceleration. 🤔
Tomorrow
@JeffSnider_AIP
and
@NicholasBlack60
will be talking digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Any topical questions you'd like me to ask these two experts?
You can follow the show live tomorrow here:
This was a spectacular performance by
#JeffSnider
.
Everyone knows him as an expert on the offshore dollar system but in this show he really showcased his knowledge of
#China
.
Also, the ultra-rare—previously thought extinct—
@JeffSnider_AIP
prediction (sorta).
Free to watch!
Dive deep into financial market plumbing, Fed policy, the Chinese economy, and inflation in this macro masterclass between
@JeffSnider_AIP
and
@KeithMcCullough
Watch their entire conversation for FREE here:
JC is unimpressed by my 3.9-kilometer, 19-race effort in Jamaica last week, saying—and I paraphrase—'you moved through the pool like a pregnant yak'.
Running on the other hand, he avers, doesn't allow pork on the course. Wrong! Here I am grazing, in a marathon, three weeks ago.
@EmilKalinowski
Sry but u still look fat
I was always under the impression that u can be fat as fck and still swim ok
Quite diff than running for instance
I am the “Coach of the Year” for the Arizona Dynasty (make-believe) League of Fantasy (American) Football—I calculated the results myself.
I’m here celebrating and sweating the semifinals with three LAR in my lineup: M. Stafford + C. Kupp + P. Nacua
🎄 🏝️ 🧙♂️ 🏈
At least by this one measure, and many other economic accounts, Biden is America’s best President!
Coincidentally (?) such measures identify Johnson, Trudeau, Morrison, Arden and many (all?) leaders as their nations’ greatest leaders too.
This may be humanity’s greatest age!
I interviewed
@Jared_Bibler
about his fabulous book
#IcelandsSecret
.
Iceland's GFC experience is infamous—actual bankers went to jail!—but what happened really?
📺
🔊
📡
🎙️
A March 31 regulatory deadline may cause a volatile rebalancing of the US Treasuries. How did it get to this?
We start in 1974, with a modest German bank (Herstatt) that grinds the interbank system to a halt. It's
@JeffSnider_AIP
story hour!
#SLR
#TreasuryBills
#CapitalRatios